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In April 2015, Mathieu Pernot visited La Santé prison several times soon after the last arrestees were transferred to other penitentiary institutions. He photographed the entire building and went over all the cells to identify the graffiti inscribed on the walls and take the images which were still there. These traces make palpable the presence of the authors of these images witnessing their unique place of expression. Mathieu Pernot documents them before they completely disappear with all his distinctive sobriety and rigor.

In the autumn of 2015, at the beginning of the building works and the prison’s demolition, Mathieu Pernot also photographed the different steps of the destruction of this 19th century building. These series are presented in the second part of the publication. On the ruins, a new penitentiary institution has been constructed. It will open in the autumn of 2018.

This book recreates fragments of stories, words and images of those who found themselves inside of these walls. The inscriptions were transcribed conserving the spelling and syntax of the original texts. They are side by side with the images which were previously hung in the same place. The traces identified in the cells whose numbers appear at the top of pages unfold into this book to reconstruct the history of the inside.